CITY OF VANCOUVER ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT |
Report Date: |
February 3, 2005 | |
Author: |
John Schnablegger | |
Phone No.: |
604.871.6675 | |
RTS No.: |
04891 | |
CC File No.: |
8026 | |
Meeting Date: |
February 15, 2005 |
TO: |
Vancouver City Council |
FROM: |
General Manager of Engineering Services |
SUBJECT: |
Vancouver and UBC Transit Plan - Status Report |
RECOMMENDATION
THAT Council receive the following report as information.
COUNCIL POLICY
At its April 6, 2004 meeting, Council endorsed participation in the Vancouver and UBC Transit Plan.
PURPOSE
This report updates Council on the status report of the Vancouver - UBC area Transit Plan (VUTP).
BACKGROUND
Work on the VUTP began in mid-2004 and will be completed in the summer of 2005.
The Vancouver UBC Transit Plan has the following goals:
_ To maintain and expand transit use in the City of Vancouver and UBC area from 2005 to 2010;
_ To recommend new transit services that can be delivered reliably and efficiently;
_ To improve service frequency, reliability, comfort and convenience for all routes serving the Vancouver and UBC area; and,
_ To describe what buses and facilities will be needed to provide the recommended services.
The plan will make recommendations on the following:
_ Service modifications necessary to bring existing bus services into conformance with current TransLink Service Design Guidelines;
_ Allocation of new trolley buses and any required route revisions;
_ New conventional bus routes;
_ New Community Shuttle routes;
DISCUSSION
The plan team was formed in mid-2004 and includes full-time staff from TransLink, Coast Mountain Bus Company and the City of Vancouver. Helen Cook of TransLink is the Project Manager. A steering committee comprised of senior staff from TransLink, the City of Vancouver and UBC provides regular project oversight and is chaired by TransLink's Vice-President of Planning. Councillor Bass serves as Council liaison to the Steering Committee.
The major source of public input to-date has come from the VUTP's Public Advisory Committee (PAC). The 24 members of this committee were appointed by Vancouver City Council, UBC and the University Endowment Lands (UEL). Councillor Bass chairs the PAC. The PAC has met eight times since June 2004 and five more meetings are planned before the project concludes in the summer of this year. Contributions from the PAC have been invaluable in helping identify key issues with transit service and in designing the broader public consultation program.
Service provider input has been received through the Front Line Transit Operators Advisory Committee (FLTOAC) established by Council on June 8, 2004 as well as TransLink operator focus group processes. To date FLTOAC has met three times.
TransLink has also undertaken extensive consumer research on existing services and usage, including a random sample survey commissioned for the VATP that reached over 2,800 respondents to gather origin-destination and mode choice data as well as attitudinal information.
The VUTP process involves two major phases; a diagnostic phase and a plan development phase. The diagnostic phase, now completed, consisted of the following activities:
· A review of City of Vancouver, UBC, and TransLink policies affecting delivery of transit services;
· Assembly of bus route utilization data collected using automatic passenger counting equipment;
· An assessment of bus service conformance with TransLink Transit Service Guidelines;
· Consumer research;
· Stakeholder consultation; and,
· Issue identification.
The Plan Development Phase, which is currently underway, includes the following activities:
· Identification of known change elements affecting transit service and/or infrastructure within the plan period;
· Identification of issues arising from known change elements;
· Identification of changes in City of Vancouver, UBC, and regional transit demand over the plan period;
· Identification of issues arising from future growth;
· Public and stakeholder consultation;
· Identification of strategies that address existing deficiencies, known changes, and anticipated growth in transit demand over the plan period;
· Assessment of strategies to identify changes in transit market penetration;
· Operational optimization and resourcing;
· Consumer research and stakeholder consultation; and,
· Detailing of plans and recommendations.
VUTP Policy Context
The development of the VUTP is directed by policies contained in the following documents:
· City of Vancouver CityPlan;
· City of Vancouver Transportation Plan;
· City of Vancouver Downtown Transportation Plan;
· City of Vancouver Transit Strategy;
· UBC Campus Transit Plan; and,
· TransLink Three Year Plan and 10 year Outlook.
City of Vancouver's Existing Travel Characteristics and Transit Market
On a typical weekday Vancouver residents generate 2.1 million trips, 80% of which are internal to the City. In addition, another 770,000 trips come from outside the City. Eighteen percent of weekday daily trips generated within Vancouver are made by transit. This level of transit market penetration is comparable to Toronto and Montréal. Twenty five percent of travel generated externally and destined to Vancouver is made by transit. Forty percent of this travel occurs in the morning (6AM - 9AM) and afternoon (3PM - 6PM) peak periods.
Weekend transit use is quite high especially given that travel for work and school purposes is significantly lower than on weekdays. Transit use on weekends is dispersed over the day and comparative volumes are 50% (Sundays) to 67% (Saturdays) of a typical weekday. However, weekday to weekend variation is highly route dependent, for example Saturday ridership on the #3 Main is at 82% of weekday levels while Sunday ridership is 56% of weekday levels. UBC-focused routes tend to show much higher variation, with Saturday an Sunday ridership on the #99 B-Line being only 51% and 33% of weekday levels, respectively.
Changes in City of Vancouver Transit Demand 2005-2010
Vancouver generated daily transit demand is expected to increase by 5.6% over the plan period to 2010. External transit trips to Vancouver are expected to increase 6.8%. This represents 21,000 and 13,000 daily weekday additional transit trips respectively.
Description of Current Transit Services and Infrastructure
Vancouver has 333 km of bus routes (thirty conventional bus routes, one Community Shuttle and four night bus routes). These are served by 205 60-passenger trolley coaches, 111 55-passenger diesel coaches, 80 85-passenger diesel articulated coaches, and seven 24-passenger Community Shuttle minibuses. Passengers access these bus routes from 1,920 bus stops, six hundred of which are equipped with shelters.
These bus routes are fully integrated with SeaBus, the Expo and Millenium SkyTrain lines and the WestCoast Express commuter rail line.
Current Transit Accommodation and Priority
Bus services within the City operate on the arterial roadway grid and therefore are subject to traffic signals and other traffic regulations. Traffic signals generally operate within a "vehicle delay optimized" environment. This ensures that busses suffer minimal delay within a mixed traffic environment. Parking prohibitions particularly during weekday peak periods are instituted along portions of key transit corridors to manage rush period transportation flows.
In addition to general traffic management, the City also provides a variety of transit priority measures including: signal phasing, transit activated signal phases, transit signal priority, curb extensions, and bus only lanes. Appendix A illustrates various transit measures currently provided within the City.
The weekday peak period transit delays from signal operations account for 15 to 48% of total route travel times outside the downtown. Delays from passenger loading range from 24 to 74%. On most corridors loading delays are three to four times greater than signal delays.
Entry to the City roadway system is controlled by traffic signals and bridges thereby fixing the available hourly entry capacity. During peak traffic demand periods this entry capacity is fully utilized. This "metering" effect combined with a state-of-the-art traffic signal control has ensured that within the City traffic signal delay has remained relatively unchanged over the past five years and no changes are expected over the next 5 years. There may be a number of locations on various corridors that may result in increased delay as a result of re-development and specific measures will likely be required to mitigate transit delay at such locations.
Current Transit System Performance
Peer Performance
The extensive data provided through the Automated Passenger Counting (APC) program enabled an identification of transit market penetration and service provision for the Vancouver portion of the TransLink bus system. Appendix B describes changes in rides per Capita and service hours per Capita between 1993 and 2003 in relation to other Canadian Cities as well as the TransLink service area (net of Vancouver). The growth in per capita transit ridership for the City of Vancouver over this ten year period was 90%. A significant portion of this increase is attributable to the U-Pass program. It is likely that when 2004 ridership is reflected in this comparison Vancouver will have the highest market penetration of all Canadian cities. (Note, however, that most other major Canadian metropolitan areas are now "megacities" that have been amalgamated with at least the inner ring of post-war suburbs.)
Transit Service Guideline Conformance
TransLink has adopted detailed Transit Service Guidelines for the provision of transit services. These design guidelines quantify:
· Access to service measured in terms of geographic coverage and hours of service availability;
· Service comfort measured as crowding;
· Service convenience measures such as directness of route and frequency of service;
· Service efficiency measured in terms of bus occupancy; and,
· Reliability measures such as route schedule adherence.
Detailed route profiles describing all aspects of service necessary to evaluate conformance with the guidelines were developed.
Appendix C contains map-based summaries of guideline compliance for all Vancouver bus routes. Virtually all routes within the Vancouver and UBC area have Service Design Guideline conformance issues.
These maps indicate that:
· Service coverage is in general compliance and not a major issue;
· All routes with the exception of route 1 (now a Community Shuttle) and route 100 conform with guideline for hours of service;
· Seven of the thirty one routes have frequency non-conformance issues;
· Eighteen of thirty routes have comfort issues (crowding); and
· Seventeen of thirty one routes were found to have route travel time variation issues.
Issues Identified
Issues arising from existing service delivery include:
· Significant portions of the bus system are at capacity during weekday peak periods. Capacity issues also occur weekday midday, Saturday midday and Sunday midday, and evenings;
· Passenger boarding times combined with congested roadway conditions result in high route travel time variances which in turn is degrading service efficiency and reliability.
Issues arising from already committed initiatives include:
· Integration of bus routes with RAV;
· Integration of bus services with VCC Millennium SkyTrain Station completion;
· Bus route accommodation during RAV construction;
· Modification of bus routes to adapt to the new Vancouver Transit Centre bus storage and maintenance facility; and
· Trolley fleet replacement.
Issues arising from future growth in travel:
· Ability to accommodate TDM induced transit growth (U-Pass program expansion) within the projected bus fleet capacity;
· Ability to accommodate growth in demand arising from population and employment growth within the projected fleet capacity; and
· Ability to serve new growth areas (Yaletown, South Fraser Lands, South East False Creek) within the projected bus fleet capacity.
Candidate Strategies
Potential strategies to address the issues that have been identified for assessment and include measures to: improve route reliability; increase capacity; and accommodate future growth. Specific measures identified include:
· Changes in bus route monitoring and management;
· All door loading;
· Splitting long routes;
· Increased transit accommodation and priority;
· Route and fleet optimization;
· Increased fleet size and capacity;
· Increased transit market penetration through TDM ; and,
· New routes and services (Appendix D).
Next Steps
The VUTP will be publicly launched February 8, 2005 with a media event at the Roundhouse Community Centre in Vancouver. The project web site will go live before this date. This will be followed by a series of Community Open Houses spread around the City and UBC through early March.
Service concepts developed from a review of transit service performance (including the trial installation of Automatic Passenger Counters on Vancouver Bus routes), previous input from the public, and City of Vancouver and UBC policies will be presented at these events. Two workshops will follow in March, one on priorities for changes to transit service, and one on potential operational measures to improve the speed and reliability of transit services within the Vancouver and UBC area. (Appendix E VUTP Schedule of Key Events.)
Based on the input gathered in February and March, the plan team will develop a draft plan for public review and comment in May. The draft plan will be revised in mid-June to allow the Final Vancouver and UBC Transit Plan to be reviewed and approved by Vancouver City Council, the UBC Board of Governors, the University Endowment Lands administration, and the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority board in June and early July.
CONCLUSION
The City of Vancouver, UBC, TransLink, and Coast Mountain Bus Company, are dedicating significant staff and financial resources to develop the VUTP. At the conclusion of the project, recommendations from the VUTP will be summarized and presented in a "Transit Plan" report. This report will include recommendations with respect to priorities for transit service improvements and modifications over the period 2005-2010. The Plan will also include an "implementation and staging strategy" that all agencies involved can use to implement transit service and infrastructure improvements. It is intended that a final plan will be available for presentation by the summer 2005.
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Appendix A Transit Accommodation and Priority Within the City of Vancouver
Appendix B Peer Comparisons
Appendix C Service Design Guideline Conformance
Appendix D New service options
Appendix E Vancouver - UBC Area Transit Plan Public Consultation Program - Key Events